“You know nothing.” The old ghost bared his hazy teeth.
“I know the ghosts of the villagers are clinging to that little boy right now. Dozens of them at least.”
“Why not? They still want to live. They want to feel and breathe and see and taste. It’s all so dim now. Living beyond death. Cold and dark and still. So little color, so little light. Everything that was rich and wonderful is lost to us now. So they’re angry.”
“You seem pretty angry yourself,” Asha said. “Why aren’t you with them?” She picked up her pestle and began to grind the mahua flowers, slowly turning and crushing them over and over in the mortar.
The man turned aside. “I lived my life. I’m done with this world.”
“If that were true, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.” As the mahua powder and oil began to collect in the mortar, Asha lifted the mashed petals away.
The ghost shivered as a light breeze rippled through the cave, troubling the thin lines of aether around his face. “Where else can I go?”
Asha frowned up from her work. “You don’t need to go anywhere. You’re dead.”
“What would you know about it?”
“More than you, evidently.”
* * *
Asha sniffed the amber paste in her mortar. “I studied plants and medicines at a temple for several years. It was a very different place from the city where I was raised. Quieter, smaller, and cleaner. But it was also much colder. It felt like winter year round, even in the summer when the forests were green and the flowers were in bloom.
“The doctor who trained me often took me with him to visit patients. I think he wanted me to be a doctor like him, but I really didn’t have the talent for it. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t try very hard because I didn’t want to be like him. I don’t really remember now. I just liked picking the flowers and mixing the oils. I liked how they smelled,” Asha said.
“And?” The ghost scowled.
Asha resumed her work. She opened one of her copper vials and tapped out a few pale grains into the mahua extract. “One day I went with the doctor to visit an old man who lived on a mountain near the temple. His wife had died the year before and his children had moved away a long time ago, so it was just him alone in the house. He had a cough, I think. Or maybe a tremor or chest pains. I don’t remember. The doctor went inside to examine the old man while I wandered around outside looking for flowers.
“I followed an old path up the hill behind the house to a small garden where I found the wife’s grave. There were peonies there. Beautiful peonies. Huge dark pink blossoms, petals strewn across the ground, petals drifting on the wind around me. I sat there for a long time, just staring at the flowers and playing with the petals. I didn’t see or hear the snake until it was just a few paces away from me. It was very long, with a light brown body and dark brown spots down its back. And a wide triangular head.”
“A viper,” the old ghost whispered. “A very deadly one.”
Asha nodded. “I didn’t know what to do. Do you stay still? Do you run away? As I sat there, the viper crept toward me and curled its body into a handful of swirling loops, tighter and tighter. It hissed at me. It was so loud, louder than any snake I had ever heard before. I was staring straight at it when it struck. I saw its jaws open. I saw its fangs reaching out toward me, already gleaming with drops of venom, its tiny black eyes gazing up at me. And then it froze.
“It hung there in the air for a moment, mouth open, fangs dripping on the grass by my knee. Then it closed its jaws, lowered its head, and slithered away into the rocks.” Asha paused her grinding to pull out a large steel needle from her bag. She spat on the tip of the needle and began gently rolling its point through the mixture in the mortar. The dark coppery syrup clung to the cool metal, and when she lifted the needle up the liquid slid ever so slowly down toward her fingers. She tilted the needle back to keep the fluid from touching her. “After a moment, I stopped panicking and realized that I wasn’t going to die. So I stood up and turned to leave, and that’s when I saw the ghost. It wasn’t my first, but it still surprised me. It was hard to see her clearly. At first I thought there was smoke rising from the old woman’s grave, but then I saw her face, or the shape of a face in the aether.”
“It was the old man’s dead wife? Did she speak to you?”
“Yes.” Asha watched the syrup curing on her needle. The bright golden gleams in the fluid faded to blood red. “She pointed at the rocks where the viper had gone and said, ‘I never liked that snake, but it keeps the rats away from my peonies.’ Then she told me to take care going down the path and she disappeared.”
“She stopped a snake from biting you. That’s your story. Is that all?” The old man sighed.
“She saved my life. That seems like enough.” Asha shrugged. “What have you done since you died?”
“Done? Nothing! I’m dead.” The ghost scowled. “What about paradise? What about the next world? Or rebirth? What about me?”
“Can’t say. Never been there.” Asha sniffed the dark oil on her needle. “All I’m saying is that you have the choice to rest here, quietly, without a care in the world. Or you could watch over this place and help it to heal. And maybe you could even help someone passing through.”
The ghost laughed. “You want me to save you from the bear?”
Asha slipped her mortar and pestle into her bag, along with her copper vials and her wool blanket. “No, I’ve got this.” She held up the needle.
“What good is that against a raging sloth bear?”
The words were barely out of his mouth before the bear’s roar drowned them out completely and the splash of light at the mouth of the cave vanished in a blur of dirty black fur. Asha’s hand flashed through the shadows and a faint hiss followed the needle through the cold air. The bear snorted and stumbled back from the rocks, and the sunlight glanced off the hint of steel in his nose.
Snuffling and grunting, the huge animal shambled away out of sight. A moment later, Asha heard the heavy thud of the bear collapsing on the dry earth.
“It’s just a tranquilizer. He’ll wake up in a day or so,” Asha said. She rolled over and began crawling back out through the narrow gap in the rocks.
“What about the boy? What about Naveen?” the ghost called.
“Don’t worry. I have enough for him too.”
* * *
Asha carefully took her needle from the bear’s nose, lingering only long enough to feel the bear’s hot stinking breath on her hand and to hear the steady thundering of its heart, and then she left. The sun was sinking through the pale blue sky and the still air grew steadily warmer in the bamboo forest as she started up the narrow path, walled in between the leaning shoots and poles and branches.
At the top of the slope she crossed the sunny meadow, circled the fenced garden, and found Chandra sitting just outside the house, his eyes closed. She touched his shoulder and he jerked upright, blinking rapidly. “You’re back.”
“I’m back. You didn’t tell me about the bear.”
“The bear?” His frown snapped into wide-eyed shock. “The bear! I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I should have told you. You saw it? Did it hurt you?”
“No, it just gave me a little exercise. How’s Naveen?”
“Much better. He’s been talking to your friend this whole time. He really likes your little pet, too. They’ve been playing in there.”
“Playing?” Asha frowned. “He’s supposed to be resting. But I guess it’s all right.”
“What did you find in the village? Besides the bear, of course.”
“Not much. Just some old houses and some yellow flowers.”
The man’s face fell. “Then you didn’t find a cure.”
“I told you. Naveen isn’t sick.” Asha held up her mortar and the steel needle resting in the dark pool of syrup. “But I did find a cure. Sort of.”
They went inside. Naveen was sitting up, the two iron rods still bound to the sides of
his face, but now there was a chittering mongoose in his lap and a laughing nun at his side. They both looked up and Priya said, “I was beginning to wonder if I needed to come fetch you.”
Asha raised an eyebrow. “And I thought nuns were patient.” She knelt down next to the boy and touched his forehead. He was burning up and the sound of his little heart rattling his rib cage echoed in her right ear. “Naveen, I need you to take a little nap right now, and when you wake up you’re going to be all better. All right?”
He nodded and handed Jagdish back to Priya. The little mongoose raced up the nun’s arm and crept into the dense veil of black hair and white lotus blossoms covering her head. Naveen lay back on the blankets and Asha took his hand.
Chandra squatted beside her. “What are you going to do?”
“The souls of the villagers are clinging to him because they still want to live, and because they’re angry at you both for surviving when they did not. But ghosts are pretty fragile things. We just need to shake them loose.” Asha held up the boy’s palm. “Naveen, close your eyes.”
He did. He tried to jerk his hand away when she pricked him with the needle, but it was already done. She set his hand on his chest as he closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. She held his wrist and listened to the boy’s heart slowing, and slowing, and slowing.
“What’s happening?” Chandra asked.
“He’s going to sleep.” She tugged her iron rods away from the boy’s head and instantly he was shuddering and sweating and mumbling to himself, just as he had been when she first found him. But as they sat watching him, Naveen quieted and stilled. His chest stopped fluttering, the throbbing vein in his neck subsided, and the last incoherent mutter died on his thin lips.
“Is it working?” the father asked.
“We’ll know in a minute.” Asha listened to the babble of souls huddled in the little boy. As his heartbeat stuttered and slowed, the voices fell away and she could feel the heat in his skin fading. “It’s working. They’re leaving. But here comes the tricky part.”
“What’s that?” Priya asked.
“When his heart stops.”
A last dry exhalation seeped out of the boy’s mouth and a tiny wisp of white vapor slithered out of the corner of his mouth.
“There.” Asha grabbed Naveen by the arms and flipped him over onto his chest. She placed both hands on his shoulder blades and began pressing down in quick, sharp thrusts.
“What are you doing?” Chandra grabbed her arm.
Asha shook him off. “He inhaled the aether when he was down in the village. It’s still in his lungs.”
“Aether?”
“Yes, aether. The mist.” Asha eased off, massaging the boy’s back in longer, slower pushes to compress his chest.
“But you told me that aether needs to be cold or else it breaks up,” Priya said. “His fever is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
“Aether needs to be cold to collect and become visible. It doesn’t matter how hot or cold it is if it’s trapped in your lungs.” Asha kept her eyes on Naveen’s mouth. The trickle of mist was so faint and thin that she could barely see it, and it vanished utterly an instant after escaping his lips. “Normally, if you inhale aether, you just exhale it like regular air. But aether is the one thing that the souls of the dead can control, and they’ve been holding the aether inside Naveen’s lungs to give themselves an anchor in his body. We need to get it all out.”
“What about his heart?” Chandra hovered over her. “You said it might stop.”
Asha wiped the sweat from her eyes. “It already did.”
* * *
Chandra was yelling and wailing, Priya was asking urgent questions, and even Jagdish was squeaking shrilly.
“Shut up! All of you!” Asha couldn’t see any more aether oozing from Naveen’s mouth or nostrils, and she could no longer hear the whirlwind murmurs of the countless lost and angry souls around him. She rolled him over onto his back.
“He’s dead!” Chandra collapsed around his son’s head, cradling it in his lap.
“Not yet, he isn’t.” Asha pulled one of the copper tubes from her bag, opened the end, and slid a small golden needle out into her hand. There were three faint scratches on the needle. She placed her left hand on Naveen’s chest, feeling the ridges of his ribs under his thin flesh.
There.
She plunged the needle into his chest up to the first thin scratch on its side. The boy’s eyes snapped open and he sat up straight, his shoulder clipping his father’s chin and sending Chandra tumbling backward. Naveen gasped and blinked at Asha, and then at Priya, and then at the golden needle still protruding from his chest.
“Breathe. Just breathe. Close your eyes and focus on breathing for me.” Asha plucked the needle from his skin and then she held his wrist to count the beats of his heart. She listened to his lungs and nodded slowly. “It’s over now.”
An hour later, Naveen sat outside in the grass drinking tea from a chipped cup and playing with Jagdish.
“It’s a miracle. It’s like nothing even happened,” Chandra said.
“Don’t fool yourself. Your son suffered an intense physical agony for weeks with his mind trapped in a nightmare that none of us could ever understand. And he very nearly died.” Asha slipped her bag over her shoulder. “You made a mistake once and a lot of innocent people died because of it. The least you can do now is learn from what’s happened here today. Pack your things, burn this house, and take your son somewhere else, somewhere where he’ll have friends and a normal life.”
Chandra nodded. “I will. Soon. When he’s stronger.”
“If you’re smart, you’ll do it today. Priya, we’re leaving.” Asha called to Jagdish and the mongoose leapt from the boy’s lap and scampered up Priya’s outstretched hand to her shoulder. Asha frowned. “Traitor.”
Priya smiled. “Oh stop. He likes you. He just likes me more.”
They set out on the path through the bamboo forest again, traveling through the deep shadows and the deep silence of the misty wood.
The nun cleared her throat. “I thought we were going to rest there and get something to eat. Are you going to tell me what happened in the village?”
“Nothing to tell,” said Asha. “I found some flowers and made some medicine.”
“And?”
Asha glanced at her traveling companion. “And I gave some career advice to a dead man.”
“Oh.” A moment later, Priya said, “Why does it bother it you when people call you a doctor? Why do you always correct them?”
“Because I’m not a doctor. Doctors pretend to understand more than they do. They expect people to bow and scrape before them, and to pay them. And they fail as often as anyone else, the difference being that people tend to die in a doctor’s care.”
“Are you talking about the doctor who trained you?”
“I’m just talking.” Asha quickened her step, trying not to think about an untended garden of dark pink peonies at the top of a gravel path on a cold mountainside, a brown spotted viper hunting rats among the rocks, and two small graves lying side by side in the shadow of a little maple tree.
As the sun came to rest on the western edge of the world out beyond the bamboo leaves, painting the sky in dark shades of crimson and violet, they came to a crossroads and Asha paused. Priya stood beside her, the bamboo wand in her hand, the milky lotus blooms glowing softly in her hair. “Which way now?”
“Chandra said there was fighting somewhere to the west. The Persians may be in Rajasthan. And as far east as this valley, apparently. I’m not eager to stumble onto a battlefield any time soon.”
“Neither am I. But where there is a battlefield, there are usually people in need of help. Perhaps in need of medicine,” Priya said, petting the small mongoose. “After all, what’s the point of traveling across the country, of seeing all these places and learning about medicines, if not to help people?”
“I don’t know. It’s never as simple as just handing someone
a cup of tea, is it?” Asha said. “We’ll go south for a while. Maybe we can find some place warm where people need help, at least for a season or two.” Asha started walking. “I’m tired of these mountains and ghosts. They’re depressing.”
Chapter 3
Asha gazed out over the still surface of the vast blue waters. The lake stretched out to the horizon where only a thin black line marked the far bank. A warm breeze rushed across the wide open fields behind her, rippling through the endless rows of jute and beans and the distant mango orchards to gently push her toward the lake where the wind sent a thousand tiny wavelets to wrinkle out across the water.
“You like it here,” Priya said. The nun plucked the little mongoose from her shoulder and set him on the ground. “Jagdish likes it too.”
“Jagdish likes it wherever you are. I think he’s addicted to the smell of lotuses in bloom.”
Priya smiled. The dozen white lotus blossom nestled in her thick black hair were always in full bloom, always open and exhaling their unmistakable scent. The nun insisted that the roots in her scalp did not hurt her at all.
Enormous white clouds drifted serenely across the sky, riding the wind wherever it took them and casting enormous shadows on the face of the earth. Wide-winged and long-legged birds sailed overhead in the thousands, flocking in every direction at every height. They swooped down by the dozen to flutter and splash into the lake where they swept back their wings to float and bathe and fish.
To her left, Asha watched a crested grebe strut regally along the bank. It paused to consider her, displaying its proud white mask and black crown, and then it slipped into the water to join its companions. Asha stepped back onto the dirt road that followed the lake’s winding shore line and said, “There are worse places in the world. Much worse.”
For the next hour they strolled along the water’s edge and Asha described for Priya the birds gliding across the lake, the tall flowers on the shore, and the expanse of farmland to their right. Hundreds of tiny figures stooped in the fields, poking and weeding and prodding and snipping. Priya tapped the road lightly with her long bamboo rod, tracing the edge of the grass and nudging little pebbles out of her path.
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